


The Watcher in the Woods

by lwise2019



Category: Stand Still Stay Silent
Genre: Gen, Original Character(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-03
Updated: 2020-10-03
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:41:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26383561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lwise2019/pseuds/lwise2019
Summary: Considering how dangerous the Silent World is, Mikkel, Sigrun, and Reynir had remarkably little trouble travelling from the dead tank to the outpost for their rescue.
Comments: 19
Kudos: 14





	1. Chapter 1

Instinct honed over fifty thousand years is not erased in a single century.

She turns her ears and cocks her head, puzzled. Those sounds … they _draw_ her in a way that she cannot understand. They are a little like puppy yelps — oh, the lost puppies — and yet they are not like puppy yelps at all.

Through the snow she slinks a little nearer, keeping to cover, always alert for _things_ that might be hiding nearby. She watches for prey as well, though she fed well on an unwary rabbit that morning and is not yet ravenously hungry. The bitter cold that keeps the _things_ from roaming around also keeps her prey from venturing out.

She approaches from downwind, pausing often to sniff the air. There is a smell … _that_ smell! Something is burning ahead! She should run, flee from the fire … but there is that scent, an animal scent, unknown, never before experienced, and yet, and yet …

She does not flee. Dropping to her belly, she creeps forward. Something moves in the forest to her left: a _thing!_ It is larger than she, but slowed by the cold and so intent on what lies ahead that it has not noticed her. Leap, pounce, bite, rip — it is dead. She spits out the chunk she'd bitten off, shaking her head in pain and disgust, biting snow in a frenzy to remove the dreadful taste.

A little closer now. The fire seems no larger; the smoke has not increased. She crouches under the branches of a pine at the crest of a slight hill, and watches. There are two-legged creatures moving around down there, three of them, all about the same height, taller than she is long, but differing among themselves: one with a long tail; one much more massive than the other two; and the third, slender and making sounds most like a puppy. Those three stay close to the fire, unafraid of it, and along with them is a fourth: tiny, familiar, one of the clean animals that are sometimes found in ruins. The sounds that so draw her come from the large creatures, as does that animal scent; now there is another smell, a smell such as she has never encountered before. There is smoke and fire in it, but food as well, and she drools a little, sniffing eagerly at it.

Yet she has not survived for the three years of her life by rushing into danger. She watches silently as they settle down, clearly meaning to stay beside the fire for the night. She needs to find shelter for the night as well, for even in the cold, _things_ might wander about in the darkness. Turning towards the cozy den and the puppies, she trots perhaps a hundred yards before remembering that the puppies are gone. Something got into the den while she was hunting, and there was nothing but blood and fur on her return.

The pine offered good shelter. She turns back, creeps silently into the hollow of its roots, and dozes, listening to the sounds that are not really puppy yelps.

She is alert to any sound, even as she sleeps, and so she comes awake instantly as the _thing_ comes up the hill, stalking from downwind, intent on the creatures.

Intent on _her_ creatures.

Lunging, she strikes its midsection and they roll together back down the hill in a very quiet fight to the death. Like so many _things,_ it is clumsy, particularly so in the cold, and soon she returns to her shelter, her thick gray fur torn out in places, but with only few and minor wounds. Settling down again, she peers down at her creatures and sees that one of the large creatures is awake, sitting by the fire and watching. She dozes undisturbed for the rest of the night.

In the morning one of her creatures goes away, and her predator's eye suggests that there is something wrong with it. Follow it? Or watch the remaining two and the clean animal? The decision is made when the remaining two begin to make those sounds again. The sounds _pull_ at her in a way that she cannot understand, keeping her from leaving. She watches.

Not long after, the other creature returns and they go on, accompanied by an inanimate thing which she had disregarded, mistaking it for part of a ruin, all the large ones now seeming wounded in some way to the predator who watches them. Once they are out of sight (but not out of her hearing or sense of smell), she goes down to investigate where they slept. To her delight, there is a small pile of snow mixed with that food which smells of smoke and fire. She has never tasted tallow, and the first taste is a revelation. She wants _more_ of that stuff! And her creatures left it behind!

She follows, far behind out of sight but always close enough to keep track of them. The snow-covered road that they follow bears only their tracks, and later hers. A _thing_ which drags itself out of a ruined building and starts after them is soon dispatched. She regrets that she cannot eat _things_ for, though the food left by her creatures was delicious, there wasn't much and she is hungry again. Will she have to leave her creatures to go hunting? Will they be killed like her puppies? They aren't making their not-puppy noises anymore, but they leave that scent that pulls at her …

By afternoon she is very hungry and looking and sniffing for possible prey, when she smells that scent again: the food! Even so she is cautious, staying out of sight, surveying the surroundings carefully for possible hidden _things_ , but detecting no danger and seeing that her creatures have gone ahead, she creeps into the ditch beside the road and hastily gobbles a full meal of the delicious food. A kind of thought occurs to her: they left it for her. And they will leave more if she continues to follow.

She follows.

They stop again for the night and she creeps much closer this time, listening to their sounds, smelling their scent. She doesn't know why these things draw her but she cannot resist. She was part of a pack, and then something that she can't quite recall happened to the pack and she has been alone; can her creatures be her new pack? She sidles a little closer, drinking in their scent.

A series of incredibly loud bangs sends her fleeing deep into the woods. Have her creatures done that? Or is this some new attack by the _things?_ Torn between the caution that keeps her alive in this perilous land and that yearning for her creatures, she finally creeps back to a spot where she can watch them. They are quiet now and that tame fire of theirs has burned low.

She dozes, and the night is almost quiet as she kills only a couple of _things_ that come too close to her or her creatures.

In the morning the creatures move on and she investigates their camp. More snow mixed with tallow: delicious, but not enough. She will have to hunt if they do not leave her any more food. All morning she trots along their path, alert to every sound and sight and smell, but always staying back out of their view, still not entirely sure they will not harm her. They stop once, and she sneaks near in the cover of a ditch, watching, listening … yearning for something she does not understand. When they move on she follows, stalking them with a predator's skill.

Quite suddenly the one with the long tail runs off down a path, carrying the clean animal. Hiding in the woods, she watches this in surprise, wondering if she should pursue that one or stay with the other two. The decision is taken for her when the big one runs off too, soon followed by the third one, the one with the most puppyish yelps, leaving behind the strange inanimate thing that travels with them.

After studying the situation for a few minutes, she approaches the inanimate thing, drawn by the scent of tallow. Poking her nose into gaps here and there in its covering, she finds where the scent comes from and drags forth a strange cylindrical thing the scent from which nearly overpowers her. Hungry, unable to resist that scent, she eats it right there, tearing chunks from it and gulping them down. But there are more of the things, and she has pulled out three more when she hears the crunching footsteps of the big creature. Hastily mouthing one cylinder, she races into the woods, drops it, returns for the second, and even gets away with the third before the creature comes within view.

The creature stops by the inanimate thing, clearly studying the tracks she's left in the snow and the damage she's done, eyes following her trail into the woods and seeming to look directly at her. She looks back at its eyes — no, _his_ eyes; so close to the one creature without the others, she can smell the maleness of him — and there is a frozen moment in which she is poised to flee — or maybe to run towards him. She has never before felt an urge to run to another animal, other than to kill and eat it, but there is something about his _eyes_ that calls her even more than his voice and scent.

The moment passes. He takes hold of the inanimate thing and goes back the way he came, and after a while she follows, staying within the shelter of the woods.

Her creatures have entered a ruin where she cannot follow, and worse, she can smell the terrible stink of a _thing_ emanating from that ruin. This is wrong, so very wrong! She runs around the ruin several times, finding no hole big enough for her to enter, no way for her to protect her creatures. The urge to protect is almost unbearable and at last she can only sit down beside the ruin and whimper helplessly until hunger overcomes instinct and she trots back to gather the tallow cylinders one by one and carry them back to a shelter under a metal thing downwind from the ruin.

Her creatures' scent carries to her from the damaged walls and broken windows, along with the stink of the _thing_ and the smell of fire. A _thing_ always smells of rot and death, so perhaps the _thing_ is dead. In her own way she hopes that is true and is happy that her creatures seem to be safe even if she cannot reach them.

Night falls and she dozes, shocked awake hours later by such terror as she has never felt before. She has no concept of evil, but she feels evil in the air sweeping past her and into the ruin. Cowering in her shelter, not daring even to whimper in fear, she feels she has to — _has to_ — go forth and defend her creatures. At last her reluctant paws drag her out and she approaches the largest hole she found within her reach: too small to admit her, but at least she can poke her muzzle in.

She sniffs the air within the ruin, finding the scents of her creatures and the stink of the _thing_ , but no blood, no new smell of death. Her creatures are sleeping; she learned their sleep smell as she followed them. That is good, proving that somehow the terrible evil has not harmed them. Abruptly there is a tremendous crash, things falling, dust spewing into her face from the hole, and she is forced to flee back to her shelter, tail between her legs. She remains there, shaking with fear, until her creatures, all four of them, come out in the morning.

The urge to run to her creatures is even stronger now. They have survived the _thing_ in the ruin; they have survived the evil; besides that, they have tallow. All in all, they are a good pack. She follows more closely, almost daring to approach but losing her courage and retreating each time to hide in the woods.

She is not hungry, having devoured all of the tallow she stole, but she stops by their noon campsite anyway to devour the snow that they used to clean their bowls. They are approaching the sea, and she is enchanted by the new salty scent of it, though not enchanted enough to forget the haunting scent of her creatures.

The fences before them are intact. Watching from far back in the woods, she can't see what they are doing, but somehow they pass through one fence after another. She is puzzled, though the confusion doesn't last long. Rather, she is concerned that her creatures are going into another ruin, out of her sight, and to get to them she would have to cross a good quarter-mile without cover, the forest having recently burned in this area.

It is impossible. She can't force herself into that vast open area, not even for her creatures. She wants to howl in frustration, but howling might wake something. Maybe a _thing_ , maybe even a pack of clean animals. No, howling is impossible too.

She lurks at the edge of the woods for the most of the day before going hunting. Well-fed, she finds a hollow under a pine that protects her but still allows her to watch where her creatures have gone. Occasionally the fitful wind brings her the smell of fire.

The scent and the sound wake her in the morning. The scent of creatures, like but unlike her creatures, sounds like but unlike puppy yelps. She slides her muzzle out of the hollow cautiously, peering through the undergrowth to see them. Yes, two more creatures, running toward the ruins that shelters _her_ creatures.

Running? She slides out of her shelter and begins to work her way along their backtrail, dispatching two small _things_ which make noises like her creatures. She is not deceived; sound can never replace scent, and they smell of rot and death.

By the time she's cleared their backtrail and returned, the new creatures have vanished into the ruins, and she is still on the wrong side of the vast open area. She accepts the situation, goes hunting again and, replete, returns to her shelter.

Her creatures have led her to a good spot, she thinks. The wide open area holds rabbit warrens and she ventures out just far enough to snatch a meal each day. She sometimes smells and sometimes sees her creatures, out of reach but safe since she never smells a hint of _things_ from that direction. She wants to be near them, but she fears them too. This situation is comfortable.

This situation is comfortable for about a week. Then there are strange noises and strange scents, the sounds of creatures — but strange creatures, not just her own. Something very odd is happening, her creatures are perhaps in danger, and at last instinct forces her to race across the open ground … directly into a fence.

It is impossible to get through! She races back and forth along the fence, desperate, but nowhere is there an opening. Beyond, the scents and sounds of her creatures grow fainter and then go away entirely. Unable to resist, she howls, again and again, raising no response. Her creatures are gone.

She returns to her shelter, lies down to watch the ruins and wait for her creatures to return.

Instinct honed over fifty thousand years is not erased in a single century.


	2. Returning

This is a good location. Her den under the tree-roots is comfortable, dug out to fit her a little better, and well-drained because it is on a slight rise with the ground sloping away. Rabbits are fat and plentiful and _things_ few and small. She does not think in terms of months and so does not concern herself with the months that have passed since her creatures went away, but it is summer now and she has begun to feel a bit restless. She wants … something. In the long afternoons she lies just outside her den and watches the place beyond the fence, the place where her creatures were before they went away. At night she dreams of puppies.

She is returning from a hunt when she hears them: strange sounds from the place beyond the fence. Back inside her den, she slips out just far enough to see and hear and smell, for anything new must be considered deadly until proven harmless. The breeze is not cooperating; it is blowing across the open clearing between her and the fence, or sometimes from her to the fence. She cannot smell what is beyond and most of the time cannot even hear.

She waits.

By morning the wind has changed and the sounds and smells are clear: there are creatures again! Their scent and their voices are once more potent lures and the impulse to venture out — to cross the open area and seek them out — is powerful, but caution still has the upper hand. There are other smells too in the coming days: fire; strange and interesting foods; and dogs, two of them, Female and _DOG_. She has begun to pay a lot of attention to _DOG_ when the wind is right.

After some days, a group of creatures come through the fence along with _DOG_. She watches from hiding, falling in behind them to follow through the long summer day. She cannot count above three, and there are more than three here, bringing with them the inanimate thing that had accompanied her creatures. _DOG_ is aware of her, of course, but she stays far enough back that the creatures show no sign of knowing of her presence. They build their tame fire in the evening and she finds a safe spot to settle down, far enough away to be safe but close enough to hear and smell them, sheltered from the _things_ which will be wandering around in the warm darkness of the summer night.

 _DOG_ comes to her, drawn by instincts tens of millions of years in the making. He is smaller than she and short-haired to her long; his scents are fascinating to her, and hers to him, and their meeting is ecstatic. They attack an approaching _thing_ together, and when it is dead and she chews on leaves to remove the ghastly taste, he follows suit. But in time the creatures call and _DOG_ reluctantly returns to them, looking back at her as he goes. She follows all the way to the edge of the clearing where they camp, but dares not proceed and returns to her safe spot.

In the morning the creatures move on and she sneaks down to explore her camp. There is food! A nice chunk of meat of a kind she has never tasted before, with the scent of creatures all over it. She wolfs it down, noses around for more, and then sets out once more to follow. These are not her creatures, but she had only known “her” creatures for a few days and never interacted with them; if they ever return she will be joyous, but for now she is willing to accept a different pack of creatures.

If she can. If she musters the courage.

The creatures stop again in late afternoon beside an inanimate thing that she takes to be a ruin. They build their tame fire and move around clattering and dragging at things. She lurks nearby, observing from a comfortable distance, not needing to hunt as she had fed so well that morning. _DOG_ comes to her again during the night and afterwards they prowl around in the darkness, dealing with several small _things_ without difficulty.

Once more a creature calls _DOG_ back and she follows to the edge of the clearing. Most of the creatures have disappeared into or behind the ruin; there is only one standing, calling and watching. It — no, she; the watcher can smell the femaleness of her — is looking into the forest, looking for her. She shrinks back into the undergrowth, out of sight, unwilling to meet those eyes. After a while there is a thump nearby, bringing to her the intoxicating scent of meat. Not a familiar meat — she has never tasted beef before, Danish cattle having been too highly domesticated to survive without human care, even if they happened to be immune — but the meat smells a little like tallow, a scent overlaid with that of the creature who threw it.

Drooling, greatly daring, she peers out of the bushes and, seeing no creatures on this side of the ruin, she darts forward, grabs the meat in her mouth, and darts back into the bushes to tear it apart and devour it in safety. It is good. It is the best thing she has ever tasted.

The days pass. _DOG_ visits by night, but he grows less and less interesting to her. He becomes merely _Dog_ , and they simply hunt _things_ together. By day she watches from the forest, not needing to hunt because each morning the female creature throws another chunk of meat to her. The first time she sees the creature throw it, she beats a hasty retreat, millennia of instinct telling her that motion is a threat. But it is no threat and she becomes accustomed to it, then watches for it. The meat is different. There is no more fresh beef; instead there is beef jerky. It is new and strange, and therefore exciting. Each day the meat falls a little further inside the clearing, luring her closer.

Now the creature remains in view, motionless, waiting for her to grab the meat. She hesitates within the bushes. The creature has not harmed her in any way, has not even approached her. And the creature has supplied the meat; her scent is all over the food. Finally the watcher slinks out, belly to the ground, every sense alert, snatches the meat, and flees. Back in the safety of the bushes, she wolfs down the food, then pauses, unsatisfied. Though she lacks the ability to define the problem, she is aware that there is less of it than previously. She is still a little hungry.

Peering out, she sees that the creature is still there, arm back to throw something else. This object lands halfway between them. The scent is strange: the creature's scent is on it, of course, and some trace of the meat previously handled, but otherwise … it is nothing she has ever smelled before. Instinct tells her to stay under cover, hunger and memory tell her to take the offering. Hunger and memory win. Streaking out, she seizes the cheese and retreats to gulp it down and then lie in the bushes savoring the traces left on her muzzle and watching the creatures doing whatever incomprehensible things they do.

In the morning something extraordinary happens: the ruin roars to life. She flees deeper in the forest in shock and fear: is this a new kind of _thing?_ But it makes no move towards her but merely begins clanking back the way the creatures came. When it is out of sight but not out of her hearing, she skulks forward again to look for the creatures, but they are gone. Puzzled, she prowls around their abandoned camp, searching for their trail, but there is none. It does not seem that they left the camp yet they are not there. Finally she creeps into their camp and sniffs around for food, finding some meat and cheese sitting out on a tree trunk. Well-fed, she hesitates for long minutes before setting forth in pursuit of the moving ruin.

The moving ruin stops for the night at the same spot where the creatures camped before and, to her surprise, the creatures appear around it and build their tame fire. Bewildered, she finds a safe place to hole up for the night and dozes, waking only twice to combat small _things_ creeping up on her.

In the morning, the ruin moves on, all the creatures gone again, except one, the familiar female, who remains behind with _Dog_. They set off behind the moving ruin, leaving a small chunk of meat behind for her. By late afternoon, she is hungry, they are back at the outpost, the moving ruin has disappeared beyond the fence, and only the familiar female remains behind. The watcher's nose tells her that meat and cheese wait a little way into the wide cleared area between the woods and the fence. She considers, in her way, the risk: the sun is still bright; _things_ should all be hiding from it; she has been into the cleared area before, hunting rabbits, and suffered no harm.

She darts out, daring to consume the small chunks of food on the spot. The scent of more wafts to her from further out, closer to the outpost. Still hungry, she sniffs, yearning, looking ahead to the food and, beyond, to the female creature. Greatly daring, she dashes forward, gobbles more small chunks of food, smells more ahead. So, by these timid and fearful steps, she approaches closer and closer to the female creature, who is now kneeling, talking soothingly, watching her, less than a meter away from the last of the food.

Their eyes meet; she is caught by scent, by sound, by those eyes.

The world is balanced between longing and fear. Fifty thousand years of instinct are balanced against a lifetime of fear and hiding.

The watcher slinks forward, down on her belly, touches the food … and the creature scratches her behind the ears. Just there … oh, just there! It is a sensation for which she has yearned, unknowing, for all her life. She wolfs the food instead of grabbing and running.

She looks up at the creature's face: _her_ creature, now and forever. When her creature stands and leads the way into the outpost, she follows.

The watcher has come home at last.


End file.
